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Google Toolbar joins Folding@home

StoneTable sent in word that 500 users of the popular Google Toolbar were invited to donate their spare CPU cycles to the Folding@home project. There is a good chance the "Google Compute" project will later include other distributed computing projects, but there is no word on when other people will be invited to join or if they will be able to choose which project they wish to be involved with. The widespread popularity of the Google Toolbar should recruit countless new people to the world of distributed computing, although I'm sure the most dedicated folks will stick to their CLI versions.

Google currently has no plans to use Google Compute to generate revenue, but, digging around the Folding@home page, I may have found a motive for the skeptical people out there. By default, the Google team will receive credit for units produced via the Google Toolbar, and according to F@H's stats page, they are now in 54th place with a score of 3821.3.

Details about modifying your registry to install the Google Compute client and contribute units to Ars Technica Team Egg Roll (edit the teamid to 14 in Program FilesGoogleDCCclient.cfg) can be found in this thread and this post's discussion thread, courtesy of faz, Mick_Foley_is_god, and nottestuser. As usual, props to all of the Ars Distributed Computing Arcana contributors.